American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American Csi

By Kate Winkler Dawson

Book Overview

From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air (Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale--Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities--beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books--sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the American Sherlock Holmes, Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest--and first--forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Heinrich was one of the nation's first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His work, though not without its serious--some would say fatal--flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.

Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon--as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525539557
• ISBN13: 9780525539551
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

Fascinating. A good crime story and forensic science is always a winner, but you also learn about the history of the science and the man who was behind it.